I love buffet style restaurants, you get to choose what YOU want to eat and how much. But our faith should not be a smörgåsbord. We should be picking and choosing what we want to follow and believe (I am not speaking of denominations here my friends, put personal faith within your local church) – but many people and sadly many churches do just that – pick and choose what is to be followed and what is not.

What has God given you? All you will ever get – Eternal Life and Salvation free and clear. What more do you want? With that said – Love should be the basis of all that happens in a local congregation and also between all faithful Bible based churches.

Making disciples is the primary focus of church. We can introduce hundreds of people to Christ (or win them to Christ, depending on how you word it yourself) but if we don’t move them to learn, if we don’t make them into disciples that understand and follow the Word of God, then we just end up having a church full of nice people with no worldly mission – and thats not what God called us for. God uses people to reach people and there is no way you will ever reach people if you don’t know what you are asking them to reach for!

Disagreements are a joy to encounter. They open our minds and let us test our own knowledge in the debate and corrects us if we are wrong (but only if we are open enough to realize that we may be wrong in the first place). I always encourage my congregation to read both sides of an argument – even within the SBC, so that we know what they really are saying. Why, I even encouraged them to see the Da Vinci Code and the Tomb of Jesus – so we can discuss and use the information contained in them to better evangelize and so that we ourselves would be able to give an intelligent answer to questions raised by weak believers or unbelievers – not just well thats what I believe cause its in the Bible.

But thats me – and I hope and encourage you all to be that way. Never be afraid to question the Bible or your own faith – cause if your faith is strong, you know God without a doubt will lead you to the right answer!

Man, have we moved away from denominations or what?
God Bless you All!
Pastor John

As far as discipleship, I think somewhere in this discussion we’ve mentioned how poor a job a lot of churches do training people and doing discipleship, and yet it’s the whole point of the Great Commission. The GC does not say “Go out and get people saved” but “Go out and make disciples.” So, that’s what we should be in the business of doing.

If a church is not doing that or desiring to do that, then you need to critically look at whether you should be in that church.

So, you’re saying that you’ll grow more in a church that is crippled spiritually? Interesting.

The Lord says to let your light shine from the hilltop, not to run away. You are right that if a Church denies Christ we are to separate, there is no question there in my mind. That is not what this post was about, however, it was about where to draw the line before that. I don’t think you need to.

I also do not think that we ought to just join a church that is weak simply because we are strong, but if you “outgrow” your church, I see no reason why you should suddenly leave. The Lord needs people who are growing up to reach others who are growing behind them.

Thank you both, Pastor John and Stephen for replying.

What you said about Bible churches, Stephen I think is pretty accurate. Plus, many Bible churches today are now charismatic. The Bible churches I attended also had their problems, that I can see now. They were also rather exclusive and prideful and I think had some problems with application of the Bible, although that is probably just a problem in general with all of us Believers because we have a sin nature.

Thank you for listing some of the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, and I do think some of it sounded a little scary. Also the part about local churches and pastors signing allegiance. While I do think we need to know and understand what we believe, maybe too much importance is being set on the rules rather than the Bible. Again, we as humans want to be pretty important.

Stephen, I know you had addressed this to Min, but I wanted to add my thoughts. I would not knowingly attend a church that believed that the gift of tongues was still present. I would leave a church if that was brought in. I believe that I Cor. 13:9&10 are saying that only part was given to us…the gifts of prophecy, speaking in tongues, healing… and when the ‘perfect’ comes, (the completed canon of scripture) the ‘partial’ (the gifts I listed) will end. And that even greater than these gifts is chapter 13, defining love. I have had and do have friends that believe that they speak in tongues. I always ask them to go over the ‘rules’ given for speaking in tongues, given in chapter 14 of I Cor. starting in verse 26-28. It was done in an orderly manner, one at a time and an interpreter with a gift to interpret was there. If there was no interpreter, you were to remain silent. This has not been what I’ve observed.

The problem that I have is that generally, the “I’m the only one, but I’ll pull them up” doesn’t work. Usually the case is that they erode you– maybe not in the key areas, but other areas. You need to find and make relationships in places where you’re mutually challenging each other.

However, do I believe this is a good reason to leave a church? No. Do I believe salvation is the only reason to leave a church? No. There are other doctrines I draw the line on, plus personal preferences that would prevent me from joining a church but might not make me leave it.

If your church is headed away from Christ, you can choose to stay and hope to lead it back, but if it eventually crosses the line, God says to mark them and avoid them.

In issues of faith you cannot stay in one place, you’re either growing or backsliding. Since this is the case, and since each person is going to react to differences in doctrine differently, being in a church that doesn’t agree with your personal worldview can be dangerous. In weaker Christians, it can strengthen, but it also has the power to destroy.

MIN, that is from you, but I would not be able to agree entirely. I think you have a good point about the weaker Christians. (Only trouble I see there is that weak Christians seldom know they are weak.) But for those of us who are in the Word regularly on our own time and who are not dependent on the Pastor to feed us our weekly bread, but instead eat daily, we are a light to those who are weak. What happens in a church where there is no one to reveal the truth?

I know that I spent about five years in a weak church. When I first went it was stronger than me and I grew alot from the pastor. But as time went on and I got more and more involved in the Word and learning on my own I realized a bunch of things that were not really right. I didn’t leave though. They weren’t salvation issues, and therefore were not important enough to break my covenant with them. Instead I watched as the Lord used what He taught me in my secret prayer times to reach those around me. I watched as those who were my closest friends grew into a fuller knowledge of Christ and His will for our lives. The Lord uses Christians in churches they don’t completely agree with all the time.

I think we should be more open to unifying the church even with the weaker brothers, instead of abandoning them. (Just read the above paragraph by Pastor John and also wanted to say that splits in the church that are not rebellions based on people’s disagreeing with the authority of the church are good ideas. Obviously some churches need to separate because they become too large to really meet the needs of the people effectively. I don’t think there is an arbitrary number there either, it is different for every church. But those churches should still remain unified, not
separated.

My two cents,
Mrs. Meg Logan

Having just recently been through a split (and speaking of splits) my father always says that he doesn’t see a Biblical reason to leave a church but heresy. Agree?

Well heresy is certainly one reason. Perhaps apostasy is another. The problem is that it is much easier to say (and even believe) a church is apostate than we imagine. If Christians are doing something we just don’t agree with, it is tempting to think they are walking in disobedience, and it is just such a break down in compassionate thinking that causes many a church split.

But church splits can be amicable and good. Some years ago I heard a statistic that churches in Brazil (particularly pentecostals) were more likely to split than anywhere else in the world. At the same time, these churches were growing very rapidly.

If God has raised up more leaders in a church than it needs, it may be that he has done so for the purpose of division, much like cells divide in the body and then grow independently. Indeed, some have tried to emulate this very model by creating “cell churches”.

Remember, after Solomon’s death, the kingdom was split by civil war into Israel and Judah. Notice also that God said that this split had come about because it was His will.

I also note that I asked whether, if you started to speak in tongues, you would feel that you needed to leave your church. At the time you indicated that it would be too big an issue, so yes, this would be a doctrinal issue causing you to leave. (For me, it would not be – but the question is whether there are some doctrines that are not actually heresy that might cause us to leave a church).

I don’t mean to dig at the Bible churches, which clearly are being faithful to scripture as they read it. However, I note that many other churches are serious about their reading of scripture, going back to the original languages, and reading verse by verse (although, of course, sometimes it is better to read a broad sweep too. I believe Paul should always be read first at a run… an example being the whole discussion of the book of Romans, where we see an analogy with Adam and Eve, and the captivity in Israel that is easily lost if you read a chapter at a time. As you move through Romans 6 and 7 and come at last to Romans 8, you see the analogy with the return from captivity).

So whilst I have no problem with Bible Churches per se, I do not really see them as being substantially different from, say, a free evangelical church.

I daresay that there are certain doctrines that all Bible Churches share. I also would venture to say that the reason that these churches share those doctrines may have more to do with culture and history than a straight reading of scripture. No-one develops a theological framework in a vacuum. We are all affected by the assumptions of our age, oyur church history, things we have seen and heard.

So if I join a methodist church, you are right that the denominational label tells me something about their beliefs (e.g. in infant baptism, lay ministry and so forth). If I join a Bible church, I might also expect certain beliefs – the only difference is that they are not as clearly advertised.

That does not make them wrong. But it also perhaps does not make them any more non-denominational than a loose confederation of churches such as the Assemblies of God.

I’ll open a post to discuss this– please bring anything to my attention there.